The Shadows of the Rim
by Saber Girls
Summary: Two years after the destruction of Malachor V the Republic is recovering steadily from the recent wars. But on the Outer Rim, something is stirring... Interlude 1: Two years earlier: the Exile dances on a table and meets with an intellegence agent.
1. Opening Crawl

The following is just a crawl, because you know what? I'm sticking to format on this one. As in KOTOR format. That means

a. There's a crawl.

b. There are new characters, though the characters from the actual games feature much more heavily than the KOTOR 1 characters did in KOTOR 2.

Disclaimer: Unless I made it up, I don't own it. I make no profit from this endevour. This applies to the entire fic.

-1/30/07: went back and added dividers where asterisks got eaten.

* * *

**A LONG TIME AGO, IN A GALAXY FAR, FAR AWAY…**

STAR WARS: KNIGHTS OF THE OLD REPUBLIC

EPISODE 3: THE SHADOWS OF THE RIM

It has been two years since FORMER REPUBLIC GENERAL KAYDA JANAR destroyed MALACHOR V, and the Galactic Republic's recovery from the Jedi Civil war is proceeding smoothly. With the continued success of the Telos Restoration Project, the healing of war ravaged worlds has begun throughout Republic territory. The MANDALORIANS are once more becoming a force to be reckoned with, but have so far confined their raiding to worlds occupied by the remnants of the Sith. On the Outer Rim, on the edges of the Unknown Regions, beyond the reach of Republic power, independent planets continue to wage war on one another, to form fragile coalitions and powerful alliances, to turn on and betray one another, barely effected by the troubles of the larger galaxy.

But the Outer Rim has troubles of its own. Scouts and explorers who venture into the fringes of the Unknown Region speak of a GREAT WAR, ripping apart a greatcivilization of the UNKNOWN REGIONS, and of a TERRIBLE MENACE rising from the ashes. Seven years ago the Jedi known to the galaxy as REVAN disappeared into the Unknown Regions, seeking the threat that lead her to abandon the way of the Jedi. Two years ago Kayda Janar followed her.

And now, in a forgotten system at the edge of the galaxy, the final chapter of their saga begins…


	2. Prologue: Steel Vultures

**_Knights of the Old Republic 3: The Shadows of the Rim_**

_**Prologue: Steel Vultures**_

**Dagmar System, Outer Rim**

It wasn't an extraordinary system in any way. One star and an asteroid belt consisting largely of the remains of a collision between two planetoids some hundreds of thousands of years back. But one of those planetoids had been rich in compounds that made for good hyper-drive fuel, and so two loose coalitions of planetary systems, each united by precarious economic conditions, went to war for it. They fought, bled, and died, and they paid others to do the same, and in the end those of their hired guns that survived were perhaps the only ones to gain anything. This war, this battle, this skirmish, one of a thousand fought each year on the edge of civilized space, ended as dozens of its kind did when the both coalitions collapsed within weeks of each other, their members turning on one another when that fragile economic balance tipped.

And in the Dagmar System, those corpses not frozen in a gruesome rictus of depressurization were left to rot. Dagmar was rendered insignificant by strategic and economic shifts, and its thousand derelicts were left to the vacuum, and to the vultures.

Sakira Orobu, nineteen years old with skin left ghostly pale by years of sunlight filtered through the polarized windows of the _Binary Dawn _and red-brown hair that evoked both rusted iron and dried blood, was an expert vulture. She'd been circling this prey for hours now, sensors fully alert, building a three dimensional map of the asteroid cluster from various angles. The Mandalorian gunship was practically wedged between two of the larger asteroids, and the cluster itself was remarkably dense. Getting the _Dawn _close enough to dock would be quite a challenge, but the payout if she managed it… well, the return on the targeting computers alone would keep her flying for several more months, and even any intact personal side arms or armor would fetch good price, not to mention the fact that a find like this would significantly up her reputation in salvager circles. It was worth the risk.

A twitch of her eyes brought up a display on her interface visor. According to the visor's link to the navcomp her map was as complete as it was going to get. The trick now was to find her route. Another twitch brought up an overlay displaying the outline of the asteroids currently eclipsed by their fellows.

_Relax now. Breathe deep. Don't hesitate, don't overcorrect. Just fly._

And she does. It would be wrong to say that Sakira isn't a big thinker, because she is, in her way. "Her way" is one she doesn't know for sure is unique to her, one she grew into gradually. Sakira Orobu does not memorize information beyond the bare bones of what she needs to do her job. The rest she absorbs, from a thousand different sources. Then she just lets the connection between fact and rumor, statistic and gossip emerge. The information resonates, and Sakira doesn't bother to separate instinct, subconscious, and calculation. She just lets it come, lets her mind find its own course. She just flies. It would be a lie to say it hasn't failed her yet, but by and large, it works, just as it works now.

* * *

There was just enough clearance between the two asteroids encasing the gunship for Sakira to bring the _Binary Dawn_ in to dock. Grinning in anticipation, she set the navcomp to keep the _Dawn_ in sync with the gunship's slow spin. That spin was important.

"Trajectories matched." The mike on Sakira's visor would pick up her words and transmit them to the com units each of her "crew" was equipped with, coms that shared a default frequency with her visor. "X5-M9, deploy docking ring."

The opening between the two asteroids, which spun in opposite directions but by some miracle of physics on the same axis, formed a rough wedge. Within that wedge spun the Mandy gunship, on an axis that ran at an acute angle to that of the asteroids.

"Docking ring deployed, Mistress Orobu." Those words weren't spoken into any mike. XM had a vocabulator, of course. She'd installed it herself, nearly ten years ago, just as she'd installed the com unit a few years later. He simply didn't bother with the first when he could transmit auditory data directly to her visor. Neither did she.

"Acknowledged."

Sakira rose from the pilot's seat and began walking purposefully towards the airlock set halfway down the _Dawn_'s port side. She stretched as she went, warming up her muscles for zero-g work. Fast zero-g work.

The _Binary Dawn _was not a large ship, or a particularly high-quality one, though it's captain cum pilot cum owner's modifications made up for some of that. It wasn't big enough to handle large-scale salvage, so said captain had to be very good at what she did to make a profit. She had to be good at piloting, to get her ship into tight cracks like this one, that bigger, better equipped vessels couldn't manage, and she had to be good at working to identify, extract, and relocate the precise pieces of hardware that could fit into a smaller hold. She couldn't take the whole ship, so she need to know what would sell, for how much, and where. And she had to be good at doing it quickly. In this case she had to do it in 43 standard minutes, or her ship would be crushed when the spin of the Mandalorian gunship brought it up against the greater mass and inertia of the closest asteroid. Those mods to the _Dawn_ were expensive, and had not as of yet included a navcomp good enough to re-establish a docking link with a ship whose beacon had gotten fried by a turbo-laser blast without sentient help.

XM's flat voice once more through the visor: "Docking ring locked." She can tell he's worried, though he isn't programmed to convey emotion very well.

Sakira emerged into the small chamber bordering on the airlock and flashed XM a quick thumbs-up as she began the process of donning her bulky environment suit. Bulky, but not complicated. It took seven minutes.

Depressurization of airlock: 43 seconds.

Travel time from hatch of _Binary Dawn_ to (partially melted) hatch of Mandalorian gunship: 24 seconds.

Slicing open inner airlock hatch: 1 minute 12 seconds.

And then she's in with forty minutes and forty-one seconds to work with before she needs to be back on the _Dawn_ if she wants to have enough time until impact that she'll have a reasonable chance of getting out of this alive and intact. A cable strings out behind her, ending in a net she'll clip to her suit and stow the catch in to keep her hands free. The powered reel back on the _Dawn_ will also add a little to her speed on the trip home, adding a bit to he margin of safety.

At 40:35 by the display on the visor she wears beneath her helmet she passes a helmeted Mandalorian corpse. A halo of blood punctuated by what she thinks are probably bits of Mandalorian brains spreads from the juncture of his helmet and the armored body suit that she knows covers him from the soles of his feet to just beneath his jaw. Mandalorian armor, Sakira knew, could protect its owner from a partial depressurization, but all it could do when faced with full vac was make the remains a little less messy. Sakira grabbed his sidearm as she glided past, stashed it in the net she was hooking to her left hip with her other hand.

At 39: 40 she reached a gun emplacement, and at 34:19 she moved on with a targeting computer and the gunner's sidearm in the net. The comp was a bit fried, but she didn't think it was so far gone that the cost of repairs would eclipse the sale price, if she made that sale to the right buyer.

By 30:00 flat she'd netted another targcomp, five more sidearms and a vibro-dagger. This was going well, very well indeed. Four more gun emplacements, spaced evenly along the main corridor, which looped along the full length of the ship. Figure six minutes per emplacement, two to complete the corridor's loop to her entry point, thirty seconds to reboard the_ Dawn_. Stripping the suit is easier than putting it on and can trust the navcomp to begin, if not finish, disengagement maneuvers. Maybe forty seconds slack. Captain Sakira Orobu is in her groove as she glides through the corridor, evading the occasional dead Mandy and snatching anything sellable that doesn't require her to alter course. Bigger crew on this thing than she'd figured, given the schematics, but then again, this drifter was post Mandy War. Without central leadership, rules and intended crew complements lost much of their significance.

At 29:54 things go very, very wrong. At 29:54 Sakira felt the distinct, impossible pull of a tractor beam.

"What the _frak_! XM, status report!"

She couldn't understand the response. Something was jamming her.

_Why?_ Sakira knew she was good, but she also knew that she was no threat to the kind of salvage op that could afford to install a tractor beam. She started back to the _Dawn_. On the _Dawn_ she had real com equipment, equipment she could use to identify the frequency whoever was tractoring her was transmitting on and, assuming the jamming was low level, intended only to take out relatively weak signals like that of her interface visor, maybe negotiate her way out of this. Failing that, the _Dawn _had shields, and it had weapons. Not weapons enough to take out the kind of ship large enough to have a tractor beam worth using on something the size of the gunship, by any means, or strong enough shields to give her any chance of getting out of this alive. But Sakira Orobu was damned if she was going down without a fight.

She was ten meters from the airlock when her world faded to black.


	3. Chapter 1: Wake Up and Run

Knights of the Old Republic 3: The Shadows of the Rim

Chapter 1: Wake Up and Run

She was… floating. Floating. Yes. That was the best word she could think of for it. But that wasn't exactly right, was it? If she were really floating there would be… Something. Sensations. She wasn't overly concerned with the lack of gravity. She couldn't remember the exact sequence of events leading up to her current state of not-really-floating, but they seemed to have involved low enough gravity that her current state was not an enormous transition. That lack of recall was a problem though, as was the absence of other tactile sensations. She had no sense of weight, of temperature, of where her limbs were.

This, it occurred to Sakira in a vaguely distant manner, was bad. The fact that she wasn't panicking was also bad.

She tried to open her eyes and found that she couldn't tell if they were even closed. Once again, no panic.

Her inability to panic did awaken a vague sense of annoyance. There were drugs involved in this somewhere. Sakira disapproved of drugs. Especially when they were used on her. Without her permission. This situation was absolutely unacceptable, and she would not allow it to continue. But she didn't know… couldn't tell…

Couldn't see, couldn't smell, couldn't feel, couldn't taste the inside of her mouth, couldn't hear the blood rushing through her ears…

No sensory data. No input. Like a ship. Like a machine. Neurons firing, bang-bang, bang, bang-bang. Binary? Unknown. Never bothered to look that sort of thing up.

Hormones. Fluids. Motivators. Balance the output of the system, steer the ship where you want it to go. You don't have to know every single component works. It's better to, because in deep space no one else will be around to help you, but you don't need to know it all to just fly.

Like a ship.

No sensors. No com. No readouts. Was the engine functioning? Yes. Unable to determine responsiveness of propulsion systems. Main computer functional? Who the frak could say? A computer wasn't binary. It wasn't just there or not. Why the frak was she thinking like this? She wasn't a ship.

Because she was calm (emotional output minimal), and bored (hallucinations, standard response of system in question to sensory deprivation, are not present), and she didn't exactly have anything else to do.

Go with the flow. See what it's trying to do before you count the auto-repair sub-routines out.

Why not?

Sensors offline. It wouldn't do much good to try to restore motion capabilities if she couldn't tell where she was going. So, sensors first. Start with the input system… usually easiest to repair… trace the connections… there. Foreign object. Absolutely definitely not part of the system. Can't see a way to remove with what I have on hand… Damn, why didn't I bring a better tool kit? Need to bypass it. Ugh. No way I can rewire all of that. Let's take a closer look at you, shall we?

Hmm… Let's see. No. No. Yes! Need to overload- overbalance- overpower… Gah! Vocabulary later. The point is I can do it. But what's this now? Oh lovely. It's connected to… this. Which seems to be… Yep. That's part of the problem too. Nothing's ever easy, is it?

* * *

Sakira Orobu woke up suddenly, and she did it strapped to a vertical plasteel surface and behind a convex transparasteel panel. The panel faced a row of similar spaces across a corridor maybe a wide corridor.

She was practically naked, dressed only in the one-piece skintight undergarment she always wore when she was planning to do zero-g work. No, not only in that. A mask of some sort covered her lower face, and there was some sort of metallic band around her forehead. The pressure of the air that flowed into the mask from a tube connecting it to the plasteel behind her forced her to breathe evenly. There was an intravenous needle in her right arm.

Sakira fought instinctively against the straps that held her up and pinned her arms to her sides. They gave way, dropping her to the few centimeters to the plasteel surface that formed the floor of her prison. She leaned against the transparasteel panel and fumbled with the straps holding the mask in place until she managed to remove it. Her breath, now that it was unregulated, came quick and shallow. She pushed the metallic band back over her head with the heel of her palm and let it clatter to the floor. The needle she removed with somewhat more delicacy, leaving it to hang from the tube connecting it to the ceiling.

She leaned against the transparasteel for a long time, waiting for her breath to slow, her control to return.

* * *

You didn't get to be a good salvager without learning a few things. For example: Banging on, kicking, or otherwise bodily attacking transparasteel has absolutely no effect whatsoever, aside from injuring yourself. They use it in spaceships. Combat spaceships. It wouldn't be worth squat if it weren't at least somewhat durable. Sakira didn't bother trying to break down the transparasteel bubble that enclosed the front of her prison. The way she saw it, she had two options: find some way to break out of here, or wait around for someone to check on her and stab them with the needle. Seeing as she wasn't sure how effective that would be, she decided to go with the first option.

She started by examining the straps that had held her to the wall. Synthetic fiber, cheap plastic fasteners – and that was real plastic, not plasteel but the oil derivative. You saw that from time to time on the Rim, but not often. It shattered and melted far too easily. No help there, then.

The mask, she could tell at a glance, was similarly useless, the seal between it and the wall was airtight, so there wasn't much hope of getting at any wiring that way. That left the I.V. The needle itself was too soft to do any good, but maybe she'd be able to get at some wires via the hole in the ceiling it was hooked up to.

Sakira braced her back against the transparasteel wall and her feet against the transaparasteel bubble so she could clamber up and get a look.

The transparasteel bubble flipped up like the canopy of a starfighter, and most of Sakira Orobu hit the floor with a rather loud thud. Her head hit the wall behind her with a crack.

"Frak."

Sakira clambered to her feet, looking both ways along the corridor as she did so. It was maybe fifty meters long, both walls coated with those transparasteel bubbles for the entire length. Hers appeared to have been dead center.

There were no doors at either end of the corridor. There was, however, a noticeable lack of ceiling. She recognized that feature.

Once, when Sakira was fourteen and just starting out as a salvager, she'd found a ship that was more relic than derelict. Over a thousand years old by the decay of the proton torpedoes, and worth at least a small fortune from any collector or university. She'd walked through the whole ship, running fingers that could barely discern texture through the thick envirosuit gloves over walls and access panels, command consoles and the long shorted-out holos that were attached to the cramped bunkroom walls.

She hadn't taken anything. She hadn't told anyone about the ship, hadn't gone back there even once, though there had been times it would have been the surest bet to keep her ship flying and herself fed.

Old ships, very old ships, tended to have much stranger arrangements in terms of gravity than anything still in production. Modern ships tended to conceal major shifts, to avoid the subtle but noticeable psychological ticks that developed in most species when faced with the prospect of routinely walking, for example, up walls.

Sakira Orobu did not walk up the wall at the end of the corridor. She was coming out of shock now, or possibly coming off whatever had been in that IV. Sakira Orobu _ran_ up the wall.


	4. Chapter 2: The Sleeping Hawk

Playlist: for this chapter can be found at http://hyperion-rising.

Warning: I cannot vouch for my own taste in music.

Thank you: To every one who reviewed. Your coherency and actual respect for the English language gives me hope for humanity, or at least the internet. Especially to Folk, for concrit, and to Thingie and greengrass1914 for telling me what I'm doing _right_ with enough detail that I know exactly what I should keep doing. But greengrass? She's not the Exile. The Exile will come in later (and trust me, I'm already working on developing distinct personalities and voices for both her and Revan).

Knights of the Old Republic 3: The Shadows of the Rim

Chapter 2: The Caged Hawk

Two corridors down and, unless the nature of ninety-degree angles had changed while Sakira wasn't looking, one to go before she ended up in the same one where she started and had to come up with a new idea. She'd woken up it seemed, on a corridor comprising one of the shorter sides of a very large, very empty rectangle. She hadn't seen anything but more compartments like the one she had woken up in yet, and all of them had been empty. This whole place was empty. There wasn't even any dust, which meant either some heavy duty cleaning routines or a recent decompression and resealing – a somewhat unconventional practice, but very effective if you wanted to get rid of literally everything that wasn't locked down. Including intruders. Sakira decided she liked the first option better and comforted herself that the lack of anything resembling an access hatch or door meant that there was nothing – so far – that was designed to have humans or creatures of similar size sucked out of it.

Of course, the vast majority of her body was made up of organs and other squishy bits that were perfectly capable of getting sucked out a hole the size of a pinprick.

Right. Time to focus on something new.

If there was a thorough, routine cleaning, it was probably droids doing it. If she were very, very lucky they'd be badly made or have substandard materials and she'd be able to break one open, get at something useful. Of course, she'd rather find her way out of here before anything that might or might not be programmed to observe her showed up.

Sakira ran up next corner/wall into the final corridor, paused to get her bearings, and then ran even faster. She'd found her door. She'd also found another occupied compartment.

* * *

He was a centimeter or so over average height for a healthy human male, maybe another centimeter taller than Sakira, with mahogany skin, close cropped black hair and the sort of beard that was more six-o-clock shadow gone wrong than a fashion statement. She'd have said he looked asleep, but sleeping humans just didn't hold that still.

Her first instinct was to try to wake him up. Two against whatever had brought her here was better than one against that, though probably not by enough to get out of here on her own terms, or alive-

Don't think about that. Focus on improving the odds as much as you can.

He might not be on her side. Whatever that meant. In Sakira's experience "sides" only lasted as long as the current conflict. That probably had something to do with the fact that her line of work tended to result in confrontations based on mercantile rather than ethical interests, but nonetheless…

But the only reason the guy in the transparasteel bubble would try to actively hinder her escape would be if he was one of her captors, and if they had a set up that complex in place to keep her here she was already screwed. A thousand other possibilities, ranging from what if this is a prison he could be a psychopath to maybe they stuck me in some sort of hibernation facility and he's a crewmember ran through her mind. None of them seemed particularly likely. But then again, in a situation this strange, who knew?

She would, once she found a way to free the guy.

* * *

There were no control panels in the corridor. The transparasteel compartments were didn't leave any wall space, and there was nothing on either the floor or ceiling that could serve as one either. Once it had become apparent that she would be running up walls she'd felt that it would be a good idea to check. Banging on the transparasteel bubble yielded no reaction from its occupant. Lacking any other options, she'd decided to check out the door.

It had opened at her touch, sliding up into its frame. On the other side was-

Bingo-bango! Jackpot!

It was a control room. A small one, but it was clearly meant to monitor people in the banks of transparasteel compartments. A view screen showed a schematic of the rectangle of corridors, with each of the compartments represented by a half-oval protrusion from the wall. Most of the compartments were blue, but two were different. One, which she could see corresponded roughly where she had woken up, was flashing red. Another, the one holding the unknown mad, glowed green.

The controls were basic: direction keys, command enter key, command cancel key. The same basic setup you found on electronic menus in some of the cheaper eating establishments on every planet she'd been to, as well as disposable datapads used to download news or zeens on the fly. She used it to select her compartment first and spent a good five minutes navigating through the resulting menus, trying to find a way to reset what was obviously an alarm of some sort without accidentally accessing another command instead of a menu, all while dealing with the suppressed fear that someone would catch her at this and either stick her in a more secure cell or shoot her on the spot. She moved on to the green compartment only when her own had turned a reassuring blue.

It was simpler, now that she had some experience with the system, to get it to do what she wanted. Open the canopy, cut the intravenous, cut "neural distortion" – oh frak that must have been that headband thing just how many ways have they been messing with my brain? – and back into the corridor to say good morning.

* * *

"Morning sunshine."

Human, female and tall. More lanky than slender, with red-brown hair, grey-green eyes, and very pale skin. Leaning against a window of some sort.

He was lying on a cold floor and she was looking down at him with an expression that was simultaneously apprehensive and determined. Also, he wasn't wearing anything but his boxers and he had no idea where he was.

Aric's first semi-coherent thought was that this was not going to be a good day.

"Wha'?" He couldn't seem to get his voice to work.

"You know as much as I do. Maybe more, seeing as I know approximately nil. The only way out is over here. Let's go." And then she walked off. Unsure of what else to do, he tried to stand up, bracing himself against the wall of the… cell? Cubical? Whatever it was, he failed miserably. His motor functions were completely shot. What the hell was going on?

"'amnit."

"To say the least." The woman was back. She bent down and pulled one of his arms over her shoulder. He could feel the tension in her back. She stood up, pulling him with her, and took a step forward. "Lean on me."

He did, and with her help made it to some sort of control room where she dropped him in a chair then leaned over him to do something to a control board. He should be paying more attention to that. He should be able to pay more attention to that.

"Feeling any better?"

"A bit." At least vocal control was returning. "Where are we?"

"Hell if I know. Probably a ship. No one bothers messing with artificial gravity planet-side unless they've got something higher than high security to hide, not to mention credits to burn. I don't know about you, but I can't think of anything I've done to land myself in that short of trouble."

Oh frak.

She glanced at him questioningly. "Have you?"

"Not that I'm aware of."

After all, they wouldn't go for me. You shoot for the head, or the torso. Not the limbs.

But the head didn't –

"Can you stand?" She was done with whatever she'd been doing and was now examining the door opposite the one they'd come in through.

"I'll check." He found that he could, if not without a touch of dizziness.

"Walk?"

Further analysis established that he could indeed walk, as well as jog in place, though the latter also brought on slight dizziness.

"Good. I have no idea what's on the other side of the door, but I'd rather take my chances than wait for something to happen. You?"

He nodded.

"Good. Follow me." Then she put a hand to the door, it opened and they were off.

* * *

Hallway after hallway, all of them deserted. The first ten minutes of speed walking turned up only doors leading to equally deserted bunkrooms. The suspense, Sakira thought, peeking around yet another corner, would probably kill her before anything else. She stepped forward, followed by her still slightly disoriented companion.

They spotted the hatch near simultaneously.

"Look–"

"I see it." She stepped forward and palmed it open. "Repair kit. Pretty heavy duty." She pulled out a plasma torch and hefted it in one hand. It wasn't a blaster, but…

"Anything else useful?"

"Just a second… here." She tossed him a multitool. "It's got a laser cutter. I disabled the safety."

"Gee. Thanks."

"Don't knock it. Or would you rather have the engine tape?"

Their stroke of luck continued all the way down the corridor. The last door on the lead to the central environmental control room. Sakira left her companion to rummage through the storage cabinets and got to work on one of the computers. There had to be a schematic in here somewhere…

"Bingo."

"What?"

"I know where we are."

"And where's that."

"On something mobile, armed, and about the size of a really heavy frigate. There are three separate docking bays, all equipped with trac-beams. You got any datapads over there?"

"Several. Nothing but maintenance records on them, as far as I can tell."

"Pass me one."

"Here."

"Thanks." She plugged it into the port on the consol and started downloading the schematic, bringing up another record to examine in the meantime. "Anything else interesting?"

"Nothing. A few datapaks, but nothing useful. You?"

"Noth– holy frak, yes."

"What?"

"Oxygen consumption rates, for the last two weeks. It's been three days since the ship's had to cycle carbon dioxide. Or at least it had been until we got out, but we've been using so little air compared to the total capacity that it only started cycling again a few minutes ago. There's a power consumption read out here, too. I can probably figure out if we're in hyperspace or not…" Access the submenu, display " of Total Energy Capacity in Use" and…

"We're leaving. Now."

"You mean we're not in hyperspace?"

"We're not even running the subspace engines. How did you get here?"

She grabbed the data pad and tossed it to the dark haired man, not stopping to see if he caught it before picking up her plasma torch and heading for the door.

"The last thing I remember is getting tractored. I was between jumps and – "

"What were you flying?"

They were out of the room now, he having followed her as she started a fast jog down the hallway.

"A Corellian IS-400."

"Was it at spec?"

"Ye –"

"DOWN!"

* * *

Metallic footsteps for a nanosecond of warning, should have noticed them sooner, push him down and lunge forward low. First shot skims centimeters above her head. Three quick, panicked slices. Third one hits and the arm holding the blaster falls away from the droid's body but that doesn't stop it so she runs behind it and jabs the plasma torch into the back of its "head" and thanks whatever gods there are that engineers tend to put the important bits in there out of pure habit then she spins around because she sees the shadow and she's staring down the barrel of a heavy blaster pistol and oh-god-no-I-don't-want-to die-yet. And then there's a shot from behind her and he's holding the downed droid's weapon and she barely manages to roll out of the way before the other one collapses on top of her.

Then he's pulling her up and jamming the datapad into her hand and she only just manages to grab the multitool he's droped and then they're running again.

"Which way to the closest docking bay?" he calls as he beats her to the next corner.

At this point she's got her head mostly back together. She'd been in fights before, sure, but somehow this was different.  
She flicks the safety on the multitool back on and stuffs it down the neck of her one-piece as she checks the map.

"Left."

* * *

Aric took the lead now, with the woman pacing him without difficulty and calling out directions when necessary. His head was mostly clear now and he was, he suspected, much more in his element here than his companion was. She new how run a search, that was clear, but the whole "being shot at" seemed to be a new experience for her, though she seemed to be adapting to it quickly. There had been two more encounters since the first, and the interval between them had decreased each time, but his companion hadn't appeared nearly as shaken by either. She'd also picked up a blaster from the second group, but she was still holding on to the plasma torch for some reason, holding it with surprising dexterity in the same hand as the datapad.

"How much farther to the docking bay?"

"About two hundred meters to the nearest entrance. The control room is another thirty down the hall from that. The controls for the tractor beam should be in there."

Damn. He hadn't thought of that. Should they split up? Which one of them would be able to get the beam off quicker? Was either of them a good enough slicer to delay any attempts to reactivate it? Hell, would there even be any ships in this bay?

Another pair of security droids rounded the corner in front of them. Aric downed one with three quick shots and his companion got in two to the second before one of its shots grazed her blaster arm. She let out a yelp and dropped her weapon as Aric finished her attacker with a shot to its mechanical head. He turned around to help her up and found her already standing, blaster back in hand, examining the wound.

"Just a burn," she said through gritted teeth. "I'll deal with it later. We're almost to the docking bay."

He nodded and started running forward again. Her footsteps started up a few seconds later, a bit less steadily paced, but not walking.

* * *

"Stop."

Sakira's companion did so without comment or question. He moved to put his back against the wall and held his blaster at ready.

Sakira herself remained in he middle of the corridor, listening.

Is that…?

She let her arms fall to her sides and tilted her head back, closing her eyes.

"What are you do –"

"Hush!" The glare she flashed in his direction shut him up quickly enough, but she still had to concentrate to find the single, distinctive component of the running-ship buzz that permeated the air around her. She found it, though, and switched the full force of her concentration to identifying it. When she did, her eyes sprung open and started running down the hallway without even a glance at the who had stood guard during her silence.

"WHERE ARE YOU GOING?"

This wasn't the steady, loping run she'd been using since their first encounter with the ship's security droids had scared her out of a simple jog. This was a flat-out sprint she'd used less than a half dozen times in her entire life. Sparing the breath to make her reply felt like taking a major risk, but she needed her companion aware of the situation.

"Tractor beam just went on." He'd caught up to her now and seemed to be matching her pace with somewhat more ease than she had keeping it. That would probably annoyed her slightly if she hadn't been completely focused on reaching the docking bay as fast as was humanly possible. Faster, if she could manage it.

"Frak! This changes everything."

It did indeed. There were, as Sakira saw it three posibilities:

Possibility one: Tractor beam is being used to guide a willing ship in, either because someone doesn't trust the pilot's ability to in confined spaces or because the bay is crowded enough that a manual landing would be incredibly difficult to pull off.

Possibility two: The tractor is being used to move space debris.

Possibility three: The beam is being used to bring in an unwilling ship.

Possibility one meant more enemies boarding. Possibility two meant the tractor beam wouldn't be engaged for long. Possibility three meant that more security droids would probably be waiting for the arrival of the captive ship's crew. Sakira wasn't sure which was the worst of the three scenarios, and for some reason she didn't care.

"You do realize that this might mean security will be concentrated around the bay, don't you?"

Well what do you know? Her companion seemed to have thought of at least one of the same possible situation she had.

She didn't reply. She could see the door to the docking bay now.

Under his breath her companion muttered something that sounded like "Why the hell am I following you?"

As she held out her plasma torch in front of her to activate the door, Sakira couldn't help a slight smirk from appearing on her face.

* * *

The hum of the tractor beam was louder in the docking bay, but Sakira hardly noticed. Her focus was now on the only ship currently in the docking bay. She sprinted over to it as her companion paused, gazing into the black of space through the magnetic field that sealed off the bay from the vacuum.

The ship's hatch was locked.

Wonderful.

She fished around the front of her one-piece until she found the multitool, then went to work on the lock.

"Can you see what they're bringing in?"

"Some sort of fighter. I don't recognize the make. What are you doing?"

She'd got the faceplate of the keypad off now…"Trying to get us into an electronically locked ship without any slicing supplies, that's what. How much longer do we have until –"

And then the security droids were there, and the shooting started. Sakira ignored it exchange of blaster bolts as best she could. She'd almost got a connection between the lock and the datapad rigged now…

"Toss me your blaster!"

She turned away from her task to through the weapon to him, turning back to the lock without waiting to see if he caught it.

There. She had a connection now. Opening the coding utility that was standard to most datapads, she started coding.

"Any idea how much longer this is going to take?" From the sound of it he was using both blasters simultaneously now.

"Almost there!" Taking a deep breath, she hit the "run" command and hoped the door wasn't rigged to blow if too many incorrect codes were entered. "Get over here, it won't be long now!" She took a moment to glace over at her companion's handiwork and saw a nearly a dozen droids lying still at the entrance to the bay.

The door slid open just as he reached her and started inside.

"NOT YET! You've got to cover me while I put this back together!"

And then he was back in the doorway, letting off the occasional spray of blaster bolts while she disengaged the datapad, reset the wiring, and

Almost there… almost there…

got the faceplate securely back on.

"Go! Find one of the turrets!"

He didn't have to be told twice.

* * *

A strange ship always takes some getting used to. This one – a Correlian make, she guessed, with a rounded bow and an overall disk-like appearance – she didn't have time to get to know.

The cockpit was easy enough to find and the systems were – thank all that's holy – not locked. Emergency startup, abrieviated systems check, start the nav-comp on starting a jump calculation to…

There was no nav-data for their current location. The ship had no more idea where it was than Sakira did…

Microjump, then. Anything, she just had to get them away from here. The rest could come later. That fighter – what the hell kind of ship is that? I've never seen that design before… - was nearly in the docking bay.

Power to subspace engines. Hyperdrive warmed up. No gravity-well to deal with, thank the gods.

Repulsors on. That man had apparently found the turret. Knew how to use it, too. The security droids were really here in force now.

If we hadn't gotten in when we did…

Don't think about that. Subspace engines full forward. Don't care about damage to the docking bay. Hope they can take it. Out of the bay, into the black, past the strange, unfamiliar design fighter in the tractor beam – oh gods it's not the same make as that ship is it another prisoner should we have waited to find out – and then engage!

* * *

Three tense microjumps, each spent praying that she hadn't killed them by eyeballing a frakking hyperspace calculation, later, he climbs, slightly shaken, out of the turret and finds her in the cockpit.

She's got her eyes closed and she's slumped down in the pilot's seat exhausted and coming off her adrenalin high. Shaky with relief himself, he drops into the co-pilot's seat.

"You going to be alright?"

"Maybe. I've got the nav-comp running some calculations. Hopefully it'll figure out where we are from star positions before we starve. Or before that ship figures out where we are."

Neither of them knows what to say after that, so they sit in silence for a while, just breathing, just trying to process what has just happened to them.He's the one who breaks the silence.

"I'm Aric. Aric Dorawn. I don't think I ever got around to telling you my name back there."

" You didn't. Neither did I. The name's Sakira Orobu."

And then she offers him her hand and he clasps it and they shake, and somehow neither of them realizes just how incongruous that gesture is.


	5. Interlude 1: Morning Will Come

_**Knights of the Old Republic 3: The Shadows of the Rim**_

_**Interlude 1: Morning Will Come**_

_Another place, another time._

It had been over a year since Kayda Janar had gotten drunk, more than that since she'd danced on a table. She was doing both now, and she was enjoying it. And why shouldn't she? After all, nothing much else was going her way.

Kayda had lost some of her sense of purpose after Traya's death. She'd had the damage to both her ship and her crew to deal with in the immediate aftermath, then the whole incident to explain to the Republic military, and while she was in no doubt as to what she needed to do next, doing it was a different matter.

For one thing, she had absolutely no idea what Revan was doing. Well, maybe not _no _idea – the two of them had been close, once upon a time – but very little. She had no idea which Revan she was dealing with: the idealistic Revan she'd first met, the battle-hardened woman she'd served under, the mind-wiped woman who'd destroyed the Star Forge, or the Revan who had –

No. She'd have to be a lot more drunk before she'd be willing to think about _that_ possibility.

The point was, she might be the best person still alive in the galaxy to go after Revan, but that didn't mean she actually knew where to start. That being so, the tip off from Republic Intelligence that they might be able to provide her with some useful information had been much appreciated. What was _not_ appreciated was that two members of her crew _still _refused to leave.

"You know, I don't think I've ever seen a Jedi this drunk."

Kayda gave Atton a fuzzy sort of glare and, with some difficulty, leaned down so that her face was directly above his.

"'m _bored_. 's good ale. 's good music. 've seen _you _drunker than this. 'sides, 'm not _that _drunk," she informed him, bracing one hand on his shoulder as she began to wobble.

"You sure look drunk to me."

"Never said I wasn't," she said happily, dropping down to sit on the table with one leg on either side of him. "'m drunk, but 'm not _that_ drunk."

"And what exactly do you mean by that?" He took a sip of his own ale and leaned back in his chair, apparently unperturbed by her behavior.

"Mos' people have to be _really_ drunk 'afore they'll dance on a table. I only have to be a lil' bit drunk. I _like _danc'in. 's _fun _to dance on tables."

"Of course. It's all a clever ruse to give you an excuse to dance on the table. Perhaps that's why we really came to Corellia in the first place?"

She sighed and leaned her forehead against his.

"Nope. Tip was real, far as I can tell. But ya know wha'? Our contact 's late, and 'm goin' to have fun, damn it! I deserve a chance t' relax. 'sides, you can sober me up. 's the same as removin' any other poison."

"Glad to know I'm appreciated."

" 'f you won't lea' me 'lone like yer supposed to, ya might as well be useful."

"You know, if you leave it to me to strip the alcohol from your body I may just leave you the hangover to teach you a lesson."

"… you're mean Atton, ya know that?"

"Yup. And you love me for it."

Kayda snorted at him before closing her eyes to concentrate on sobering up. Focusing enough to use the Force was difficult with all the alcohol rushing through her system. In the end she did it by focusing on the beat of the dance song pulsing over the club's sound system and expanding her awareness through the crowd on the dance floor, out to the rest of the club, and finally back into her own body, where she sent it out from her beating heart through her veins, stripping the alcohol from her blood and spiriting it away to her liver before giving her body another quick sweep to nullify any possible after-effects.

When she opened her eyes again they were noticeably clearer.

"Remind me not to help you out the next time you get a morning after headache," she said to Atton as she climbed off the table and into the chair next to him.

"Kay, its been, what? Two months since I really got drunk. I think you're going to have to find a new threat."

"Fine. How'd you like to sleep in the cargo bay tonight then?"

"No thanks. It smells funny in there."

"Humph."

They sat in silence for a few moments, Kayda watching Mira chatting with a young Twi'lek and Atton taking another drink from his glass before turning back to the woman beside him.

"So, you and alcohol."

"We have a long and varied history with one another."

"Do tell."

"What, the whole story?"

"Sure. We've got time, so get with the story, Master Jedi."

Kayda whapped him lightly on the head before she spoke again.

"Fine. Story time it is." She leaned her chair back and propped her feet up on the table before continuing. "I was fifteen. I was just taking a walk outside the temple – getting out into the world, drink in a little of what real life is like, you know? – and I'm a good twenty levels or so below the surface, which around the temple isn't too bad, but it's still not great. There are some punks, probably guys who've already gotten themselves thrown out of the bar nearby, over by the side of the walkway, drunk as hell. They see the lightsaber, start taunting me, calling me a sissy monk, making all sorts of lewd comments –"

"I do that too."

"Yeah, but you're cuter, and you at least try to be subtle. Sometimes, anyway. Stop interrupting me."

"Yessir," he said, giving her a mock salute.

"Damn straight. Anyway, I'm nearly around the corner when one of these guys says something about how Jedi can't even hold their liquor."

"Which they apparently can't."

"Shut up. You're the one who wanted to hear the story. So, this guy says Jedi can't hold their liquor. At this point I'm a bit annoyed at these guys, and I don't feel like passing up on a chance to prove them wrong, make them think a little bit. So I take a deep breath, take a moment to see what exactly the alcohol is doing to the system of one of the humans in the group so I can set up to slow down the effects, turn around, walk right up to them, and grab a bottle out of the hand of one guy up front. They all stare at me for a second or so, and that's enough time for me to start knocking back what turned out to be some sort of vodka. I get the whole damn thing down with out pausing, or letting it show on my face how _very_ unimpressed I am with the taste. Then I hand the bottle back to the guy I took it from, give them all my most proper Jedi bow, and manage to make it around the corner and maybe halfway down the next block before I throw up. Apparently I told Atris off for not having enough speculative fiction in the collection before I got dragged off the dormitories."

"The next time I drank was three, three and a half years later. I'd been a Knight for about three months, and I'd left the Temple on Coruscant about a month into that to follow Revan and Malak to war. They came off as damned idealistic and naïve, but I agreed with most of what they said. I did some checking on them, and once I saw Revan's file I was ready to believe that they might just make a difference. She was only a year younger than me, you know, but it was pretty obvious she didn't have as much experience with the world outside the temples as I did. But damn, she learned quick, and she had one hell of a mind for strategy. She came off as an academic who'd decided to go to war, and that's pretty much what she was, but I had a feeling about her. Apparently so did Republic High Command. The rest of us probably got our commissions largely as a courtesy, but they gave Revan general with absolutely no compunctions. Apparently _she_ had a feeling about me, because she talked them into giving me colonel and two months later I was taking command of my flagship and headed to the front. So, no, I don't do the stereotypical thing and go down to have a drink with the troops. What I _do_ do is head down to the officers' common area and get to know my bridge crew, gunnery officers, and some of the squad leaders. Most of these people have never met a Jedi, and some of them haven't even seen one before. You'd be surprised how much knocking back a few drinks assures people that you're just another mortal. 'course, by then I'd had enough practice with healing to have gotten the hang of the whole keeping-myself-from-getting-drunk thing. Never hurts to remind people you can do a few things they can't, especially when you're eighteen years old and about to take command of a fleet group.

"I actually did drink with the troops a few times, especially with groups I knew I'd be leading myself on ground missions, and after the really brutal battles, when I thought it'd do them some good to know the brass was just as unsettled as they were. I actually let myself get drunk after Serroco, for the first time since that one night. First time I danced on a table, too. I was so desperate to stop the pain."

She was looking more sober now, in more than one way.

"Serroco was _unsettling_ alright. Hell, you just got drunk? First time you danced on a table, first time I shot up." He said it all while staring into his nearly empty glass, face tight with pain.

"You were there?"

"Under Revan's direct command. It wasn't until I met you that I realized why it hit me so hard. An entire frakking planet, dying slowly, and I was hearing the echoes of its death screams. At the time I thought it was just some sort of frakked up PTSS."

There wasn't much to say to that, so she just grabbed the hand that wasn't wrapped around his glass and squeezed, all without looking away from her own drink.

"After… after the war, I didn't know what to do with myself. My whole world had fallen apart for the first time when I joined Revan, but that had been my choice. The second time it wasn't. I mean, it was, in a way, because I chose to return and face the council, but that was because I thought it was right, not because I, you know wanted to. I'd made a decision in joining Revan, and not going back would have been running from the consequences…"

"The point is, I went back, I faced the consequences, and I fell apart. I ran, basically, to the Rim, and just drifted for a while. The first time I went into a cantina, to hear the music, you know? All the hustle and bustle and the music you can almost pretend you can feel the life even without the Force. I managed to forget I couldn't feel the Force anymore, which I guess is why I went in in the first place, but that meant that I forgot I couldn't sober myself up anymore. My first bender. I don't remember much of it, but apparently I did a great deal of dancing on tables. Some singing, too. The singing was apparently what finally got me kicked out."

"Ouch."

"Yes. Very ouch. They took all my money to pay for the damage I caused when I resisted being ejected." She smirked a little then, in spite of herself. "You can take the Force out of the Jedi, but you can't take the Jedi out of the bar, nor can you take the martial training out of said Jedi."

Atton snorted. Kayda shot him a look before taking another drink.

"Quiet you. Apparently I danced pretty well before I got _totally_ sloshed. I actually got hired as a backup dancer for the group that was playing that night. Lead singer was a total softy, and this is coming from a Jedi."

"Do tell."

"Gee, you must like the sound of my voice almost as much as you like the sound of your own, Atton."

"Oh, I like it all right. Especially when you call my-"

"Hate to interrupt you two, especially just when the subject matter was starting to sound interesting, but I've got someone here I think you might like to meet, Kayda."

She turned around, saw Mira standing behind her with the Twi'lek she'd been talking to earlier.

"This is Mission Vao. She's our contact."


	6. Chapter 3: A Ship in the Night

Thanks to Tallboy Dave for the beta.

* * *

Chapter 3: A Ship in the Night

The ship wasn't entirely empty. Very few ships were, as every salvager knew. There was always some detritus, some scrap of evidence pointing to where the vessel had come from, where it had been going, what had stopped it from getting there. This one had a speeder, a stocked workbench, battle gear and normal clothes, medical supplies, some food and two droids.

* * *

The speeder was several years old. It was a core-ward make and had at one time been a normal high-end street model, but it had been modified heavily several times since it had left the factory. Sakira knew more about ships than she did speeders, but she'd be willing to bet that this one would make good speed on all sorts of terrain, and it was in good condition.

It would probably sell for more than it had cost the original buyer.

* * *

The tool bench had been used plenty, but it was almost fully stocked. It was in the speeder hanger, though some of the parts – jeweler's cutting tools, a variety of lenses – obviously had nothing to do with the speeder. The tools were of various ages and makes, but one again well maintained and of good quality. She wondered what the jeweler's cutters were for. There were a few other things that an artisan might use, but they were also the sort of things anyone who didn't want their repairs to be glaringly obvious and aesthetically distasteful might have. The cutters were the only things could really be considered evidence of something other than normal mods and repairs going on.

* * *

There were two bunkrooms, one port and one starboard. All of the bunks had been heavily used, so the ship had probably carried a full complement more often than not. That was unusual. Ships like this tended to carry two or three crew and an occasional passengers, hauling cargo for the most part, generally exotics, valuables, or contraband. None of the bunks had seen use in several months, though two of the three in the starboard bunkroom had been used more recently than any of the rest. Sakira checked all the lockers in both bunkrooms, but only the two next to those two bunks had anything inside.

* * *

Guns, guns, and more guns, vibro weapons of several kinds, and a man's clothing in the first locker, a woman's clothes and a somewhat less extensive, though still thorough, arsenal in the second. A couple different types of armor and some other combat gear in each, including an interface visor. She could probably mod that into something like her old one – _don't think about it don't think about what happened just deal with the now_ – given some time and the proper tools.

* * *

The man and woman had both been taller than Sakira's fairly cosmopolitan concept of average height, though the woman had still been a couple centimeters shorter than her. She takes a pair of the man's pants – fairly tight on him most likely, a bit loose on Sakira – and one of the woman's shirts – loose once again: the previous owner had apparently been both more broad-shouldered and curvier than Sakira – and doubles back to the hanger for a tool-belt to hold up the pants. Then she brings Aric a set of the man's clothes – they'll be a bit tight on Aric's average build, but her salvager's eye says they should do.

He blushes when she brings him the clothes – he's checking out the small med room, stutters that it's well stocked, and she can't hold back a slight smirk.

"You know," she says, "I'm fairly sure that the ability to not notice that a girl is half naked, even when fleeing for one's life and coming down off of sedatives, is pretty extraordinary in human males."

* * *

The galley is much like that of the _Binary Dawn_, both in its miniscule size and in how it's stocked: mostly long haul rations, though some of the ones on this ship are GalRep marked, and the only place Sakira has seen those before is at Republic relief efforts – and on the black market, of course. Meddlesome the Republic may be, but they make ration bars that are both nutritious and nearly palatable. The only stuff that's going bad is a few fruits and some veg' in the cooler. Probably stuff picked up at the last port of call to garnish the ever so tasty long haul rations. Pretty much standard spacer's fair overall, and the degree of spoilage, when considered in light of the quality of the cooler, confirms Sakira's estimates as to how long the ship has been abandoned.

* * *

The engine room explains why the ship is so out of use. Someone tried to jump this thing too close to a grav well, shot the coolant distribution system to hell.

_Frak._

Those microjumps have only made it worse. This thing has one, two jumps max, before she needs an entirely new engine set-up. It might have been repairable before the microjumps, but now? Not a chance. The engine room had been tight sealed before she came in, and she re-seals it on the way out, hoping she hasn't breathed in anything nasty.

* * *

It was when Sakira retreated back to the ship's central room that she found the first of the ship's inhabitants: a modified astromech droid, armed with a flame thrower.

_Think fast._

"This… this is your ship?"

A short series of beeps that Sakira recognized as a conditional affirmative followed. She fumbled with her borrowed toolbelt, bringing out the datapad.

"Look, my binary isn't fluent. Would you be willing to plug into this so I can see what you're saying?"

An affirmative, this time not conditional, but with a cautionary tone.

"If you're worried I've got a restraining program in here, you don't have to. I'll set not to transmit anything, though." She did, and plugged the pad in. Words immediately appeared on the screen.

**I am acting owner of this ship, which is registered to one Asherea Dawyr, as am I.**

_Acting owner, but registered to an owner. A semi-emancipated droid?_

"And you are?"

**T3-M4.**

"T3-M4, my name is Sakira Orobu, and I apologize to you, in your capacity as acting owner, for the unauthorized use of your vessel. It was under dire circumstances, specifically under threat to life and limb, that I boarded without authorization, and took control of, your ship."

**This is acceptable. In fact, I must thank you. I am glad to have this vessel leave its previous location.**

_Semi-emancipated, but you haven't had the sub-routines that prevent you from piloting a ship independently removed, have you?_

"Two questions for you, T3. First, what is the name of this ship, and where is it registered?"

**This is the Ebon Hawk, of Dantooine.**

"Never heard of the planet, but the ship's name actually sounds familiar. She ever been in the salvage business?"

**Not to my knowledge.**

"Alright. Next question. Is there anyone else aboard?"

**You and the human male with whom you boarded are the only non-microscopic organisms aboard. **

"I meant droids."

**There is an assassin droid in the storage room off the central chamber. Please do not activate him. He will most likely attempt to eliminate you should you do so.**

"Sakira? Who are you talking to?" Aric closed the door to the med-room behind him. He was holding the blaster he'd picked up earlier loosely in his right hand, but Sakira had a feeling that he could turn that grip into one he could shoot from with very little effort.

"Aric, meet T3-M4, acting owner of this ship."

"What?"

Sakira rolled her eyes.

"He – is that the right pronoun? Thanks. – says that there's an assassin droid in the storage room and we shouldn't activate him."

"A _what_?!"

"An assassin droid. Probably an intelligent model if he'd shoot on activation."

"Oh Force. And who owns him? The astromech, I suppose?"

**Kayda Janar is his acting owner.**

"T3 – can I call you T3? – says someone named Kayda Janar is acting owner of the assassin droid."

"… Sakira, could I speak to you alone for a minute?"

"Sure. Be right back T3."

She followed Aric into the cockpit and he slid the door closed behind them.

She cut him off before he could say a word. "Before you say anything, I suggest you stop thinking of that droid out there as just a droid and start thinking of him as a person. He's basically the captain of this ship until further notice."

"We could always shut him down."

"It's his frakking ship Aric. Even if you and the rest of the damn galaxy don't plan to get enlightened on the subject of droids any time soon, you've got to accept that."

"What? Force, please don't tell me you're one of those droid's rights extremists."

"I don't care what you call it in the Republic, Dorawn, but out here there are factions that would rather see interplanetary civilization collapse than have a droid programmed to work. Treating them like people just makes me eccentric."

Aric had turned to look at the forward viewpanel, but now he swung around to face her. "How did you know I was from the Republic?"

"You swore to the Force, genius. Rimmers don't do that, except for a few religious deviants."

"Well frak."

She sighed and sunk down into the pilot's seat. "Don't worry about it Aric. I've got no problem with Republic citizens. I'm serious about T3 though. It's his ship and you need to treat him as an equal."

"… I guess. It does make sense, given the situation. It's just that I'm used to thinking of droids as, well, droids. Sort of people, sort of not."

"That's better than how a lot of people treat them. But trust me, it's not enough. You spend as much time with droids as I have, you realize that."

Before Aric could reply, the consol in front of Sakira emitted a loud beeping tone and she turned her attention to the interface.

"Nav-comp's done with it's calculations. Aric, we're in the middle of nowhere. I took a look at the drive earlier, there's no way it could get us anywhere _near_ any civilization I know of. We're practically in the frakking Unknowns."

"Wait, are you telling me we're screwed?"

"Maybe, maybe not… Aric, get T3 in here."

He rushed to open the door.

"T3? Sakira needs you."

The little droid rolled into the cockpit with a questioning bleep. Sakira turned to him.

"T3, I've just gotten a solution from the nav-comp on our current location, and from the look of the hyperdrive there's no chance of us getting back to any civilized world or even region that I know of. You?" T3 took a moment to interface with the nav-comp before beeping a negative. "I thought not. So basically we're in the middle of nowhere without a solid hyperdrive. What we do have –" she paused to bring up a display on the consol in front of her "– is a distress beacon, not too close, but close it's in what appears to be a stable orbit, probably on a planet."

"Meaning whatever's wrong with it may have to do with impulse engines or something, especially if they got pulled into that orbit or was forced to land because it had faulty maps, didn't expect the gravity well."

"Exactly. I think it's our best chance. Unless of course I'm wrong about the hyperdrive?" The last of this she directed at T3. He beeped another negative. "So we head for the beacon. I'll start the calculations now."

"Now?"

"You have anything else to do? We'll be in transit for a couple of days, might as well get started as soon as possible."

"Alright. You go ahead and do that. I'm going to check out what you found in the bunkroom. T3, care to help me out?" T3 gave an affirmative and the two of them left the cockpit as Sakira turned back to the nav-comp with a quick cough.

_Frak. What was I breathing in the engine room?_


	7. Chapter 5: The Shaman and the Starwoman

Chapter 4:

Six hours into the 56 hours and some-odd minutes of travel time, Aric Dorawn dragged Sakira Orobu into the med-room and brought up the standard diagnostic program for humans on the computer. He worked his way down the taxonomy to "hyperdrive coolant poisoning" and started praying. Untreated, Sakira had about a week to live. She'd be completely bedridden by the time they reached their destination, which meant Aric and T3 would have to figure out how to switch hyperdrives without her. Given that astromechs weren't designed to do that sort of thing alone and Aric was no mechanic, that could be difficult. And that was assuming that there was a ship with an intact, compatible drive waiting for them in two days time. Even then, would they be able to get her to a medical facility in time? Aric wasn't too familiar with Rim geography, but he had a feeling that Sakira's prospects weren't good.

That shouldn't bother him as much as it did. After all, he'd known the woman all of a few hours. But in that time they'd saved each other's lives several times over, and besides, he _liked_ Sakira, and he had a feeling he'd have connected well with her even if they hadn't met in life threatening circumstances. Provided they hadn't started off by discussing jobs, of course.

"_I've got no problem with Republic citizens," she says. Meaning she has a problem with the Republic itself, as an organization, undoubtedly because we're so meddlesome, don't leave the Rimmers alone. What would she think of me if she knew I was an Intell agent? If she knew what I was doing out here? Force, I'd be screwed then. _

It was the first time since Sakira's and his escape from the mysterious ship she woken him up on that he'd thought about his job or even what he'd come out to the Rim to do, and it set off a lightning fast chain of associations.

_Rand… that ship… Sakira… the _Ebon Hawk_…_

_Sith._ _That ship has got to be associated with the Sith. Could Sakira be one of their agents?_ As much as he hated the possibility that the woman currently sleeping in the med-room, having kolto (SP???) run through her system to repair the damage caused by, if not remove, the highly toxic coolant, was one that Aric hated, but he had to admit its existence. It was a slim possibility – if the Sith had known enough to care about what he might know, enough set up something as elaborate as his and Sakira's escape from that ship, probably have felt him important enough to just call on a Force user rip open his mind. If he were to speculate any further than that he'd end up with no firm ground to stand on, not even the reality of what he was experiencing at that very moment. – but it did exist.

He couldn't assume that was true, though, at least not yet. He couldn't afford to alienate his only non-mechanical companion. Though, when he thought about it, some of her mannerisms – her posture, how she turned her head, certain movements of her hands – actually reminded him of those of droids.

The system the beacon lead them to had seven planets, none of them, including the one the beacon originated from, had any signs of high technology. Aric was no hotshot pilot, but he knew the basics. He wasn't sure he could land without help from traffic control, led alone without even a landing pad, but he _could_ do a dive into the atmosphere so the ship's sensors could test the air for breathability. The results came back positive. The planet could support human and near-human life.

As he brought the _Hawk_ – the frakking _Ebon Hawk_, and, Force, he was flying it – back into orbit, Sakira made her way into the cockpit, leaning against the bulkhead for support, one hand rested on T3's head.

"Where's the beacon?" she asked in a hoarse voice.

"It's coming from a plain on the smallest of the six continents."

"Can you land us?"

"Maybe. If you talk me through it or T3 helps, and I rely heavily on the repulsors."

"Let's do it."

It took a quarter of an hour, and Aric felt as if he'd run for miles by the time it was done, but with Sakira talking him through it and T3 linked to the ship's systems to deal with the more severe air currents, Aric managed to land the _Hawk _safely, though he ended up a few miles from the beacon and hadn't gotten a look at its source. Sakira, sitting beside him in the co-pilot's seat, seemed to collapse, falling asleep where she sat. Aric had a feeling the ride down had stressed her more than it had him.

"So what do we do, T3?"

An inquisitive beep.

"We need to check out that beacon, but I don't want to leave her here alo–"

He was interrupted by a clanging from the direction of the entrance.

"What in the world?" He ran to the small security room and checked to boarding feed.

There was, the security cam' showed, a woman outside the ship. She was dark skinned and tall, with high cheek bones, green eyes, and a shaved head. Her dress was primitive, a simple, lightweight black wrap. She carried a staff of dark, smooth wood, topped with a few dangling wooden charms. She stared at the camera and said, in accented but perfectly clear Basic, "Open the door, starman."

Her name was Toyin, and he wasn't sure why he had let her in. She'd introduced herself briefly, asked his name, and headed straight to the cockpit. He'd run after her, and found her standing over Sakira, eyes closed, head bent. Her eyes opened as he came into the cockpit.

"This woman," she said "is very sick. We must take her back to my village so that I can heal her. Your warrior-shaman will meet us there."

"What? Wait, are you… You're a Force Adept!"

"So I am told." She picked Sakira up with a quiet grunt and handed her limp body to Aric, who staggered slightly under her wait.

"You made me let you in."

"Yes. I am sorry, and I will do penance for it. If you wish, you may challenge me with the spears and I will fight you as a warrior, and not as a warrior-shaman. But for now, your companion is very ill, and I must take her back to my village. I did not bring my healer's kit with me."

They must have made a strange procession, walking the mile across the plain to Toyin's village: Toyin – tall and dark, striding with purpose across the plain, the only one who knew where they were going , Aric – struggling to keep up with Toyin while carrying Sakira on his back, feeling small next to the presence Toyin exuded – and T3 trundling along behind them, the only droid on a world too primitive to have it's own (not counting, of course, the assassin droid in the storage area. It occurred to Aric, not for the first time, that he was now operating under circumstances he would have once thought occurred only in holodramas.). The sun set to their left as they made their way through the tall grass, and Aric could hear the sounds of animals across the plain.

The village appeared to be a permanent settlement, comprised of small stone huts fronted with pounded earth. People, tall and dark like Toyin, paused in their business to stare at their little procession, especially at T3, and chattered among themselves, pointing. Toyin led Aric and T3 to one of the larger huts and entered through a curtain of wooden beads. Aric hesitated a moment, entering only when T3 gave him a small push.

The hut dark inside with the only light coming from two small windows near the door. It smelled of herbs and spices that were completely foreign to Aric, and strings of dried plants hung the ceiling along with more wooden charms. Toyin gestured to him to lay Sakira on a pallet at the center of the hut, and to take a seat on the floor. Ten she knelt over Sakira with her hands held over the young woman's head and began to chant. Aric, unsure what else to do, sat and watched. Eventually the chanting lulled him to sleep.

When Aric woke it was dark outside, and Toyin was still chanting, her eyes closed. She'd taken some herbs down and was waving them slowly over Sakira, whose breathing seemed just a little less ragged than it had before. Some one had lit an oil lamp that hung from the ceiling. He'd been woken by the sound of footsteps entering the hut.

Toyin paused in her chanting, but didn't turn or open her eyes.

"Starwoman," she said, " you came. Thank you. This is, perhaps, one of your people? She is gravely ill, afflicted by a strong poison. You will help me to heal her?"

"You know very well, Toyin," said a voice Aric knew well a voice familiar from the holonews of his early teenagerhood, "that I would be perfectly happy to do any healing you will allow me."

Aric turned away from Toyin and toward the voice. There, standing in the doorway of a primative hut on a planet that was more than backwater, on the very edge of the Unknown Regions, Bastila Shan was silhouetted against the stars.


End file.
